The Fugacious Life Story of the Mayfly

Editor’s Note: Our Geetha is quite the artist – both with pen and SEM!

by Geetha GT – Mayflies are aquatic insects from a very old insect group called Palaeoptera. They are well known as bioindicators of water pollution. Mayflies have three stages in life, first as an egg (Image 1) in a pond or lake, then they hatch into nymphs (naiad, subimago, spinner, imago – Images 2, 3, 4, 5), and last they became adult Mayflies (Image 5).

During adult phase they live only a short time. That could be just 24hrs! They usually spend their short adult life looking for partners (Image 6). After mating, the female drops her eggs on the water surface. She then sinks to the ponds’ bottom (Image 7). After mating, both male and female fall to the water surface and perish (Image 8).

You must be wondering how these amazing creatures accomplish to do so many things in just 24hrs? Please find the below illustrations for each step in their live cycle:

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

How fascinating these insects are! Let’s learn efficiency and determination from them.